with a gracious urging of its own, which seasons if it does not inspire. But on the wing, alight on transient roofs or fickle sprays, off on excursions or visits, then is one at a disadvantage, and forced to wrestle with sloth and insipidity. Why lounge I here inert, at halfpast three in the afternoon, my senses stayed, my attitude enfeebled? Is it to be thus with the voyage of life, I won

der, when the morning is past and even the fervid noon gone by? When I shall have doubled the prominent capes

of

my existence, shall I wait thus, languid and becalmed, for the purple shadows, the wafting breeze, and the beckoning stars?—And while I thus mused, the ship impetuous plunged forward into ocean.

A

S we understand the story of Antæus, it teaches that a mortal is not of much value when he parts company with the surface of things. He must keep his feet well planted on the common level, if he would make a good speech, or write a good poem, or rule well a good country. When men go up in balloons they struggle for breath, and a sweat of blood gathers upon their lips. On the great mountain-tops life grows burdensome, and the adventurer is glad to descend to the level of men's villages and shops and homes. So when a poor miner must descend into a shaft to recover the dead bodies of his brothers, he first lets down a lighted candle, to learn whether any demons are still waiting to put out any more lights of life. It would seem that it is only on the surface that mortals live well and joyously; that there, amid sunshine beating on the ground, amid the winds sweeping along over fresh water, fresh earth, fresh foliage, the soul becomes a giant not to be trifled with by this or that Hercules of brute force.

It would be, no doubt, a straining of the text, if one should declare that in the fable of Antæus was foreshadowed

a Calvin, or Comte, or Edwards, or Buckle. This rendering of the fable may be left to those who find Napoleon III. to be the antichrist, and the "next war" to be the battle of Gog and Magog; it being sufficient for us to confess

the resemblance between the fates of the ancient and the modern giants. What is the matter of John Calvin, save that he got his feet off the ground whereon mankind stand and whereon are beating the warmth and light of life? What injured the beautiful Comte, unless it was his climbing up into mountain-tops where human hearts are wont to struggle and gasp for breath, and where there comes no smoke of village or cottage and no hum of crowded streets? What will check the stream of Buckle's fame, unless it be the fact that he went down into a depth so deep as to render it impossible for society at large either to follow him or to see just where he went in the narrow, dark shaft?

The naturalists find, both in the regions above and the regions beneath, places which they mark "azoic." The lead does not sink far in the sea before it comes to the lifeless realmthe realm of darkness and solitude.

Between this line and the surface sunshine swarms the sea's myriad life. So in the upper atmosphere, there is a line beyond which are silence and death; but between it and the earth's covering of heat and light move to and fro the great living tides.

In view of these well-known lines of material things or organic matter, why should not our philosophers of great genius suspect their domains of having lines beyond which faith and love may not be able to live?-lines over which not even a monad of soul could be wafted without falling like the birds that once aspired to cross the Avernus lake.

Calvin was a strong-minded and deep thinker; but we are inclined to believe that when in the course of his intellectual events he drew near the consideration of the eternal decrees, he should have drawn a line there, and, having written upon it the word "azoic," should have hastened back to the glorious sunshine of the surface. things were, however, his feet got away from the healthy mother earth, and this good giant was well-nigh slain by the Hercules of the next generation.

As

The distress of John Calvin ought to have been a warning to the distinguished Mr. Buckle. If the great human family would not permit its freewill to be killed by the iron fate of Geneva, there was no good reason for supposing that it would consent to its being slain by the food and soil and climate of Mr. Buckle. The fatalists said, "It was decreed of God he should do such an act;" Buckle says, “It is a matter of food, soil, climate, and nurse." In both verdicts the responsible human will is set aside, and both philosophics walk hand-in-hand down to the realms of no life—no soul. The philosophics thus descend, not the men that wrote them, much less the men that read them.

It is enough to make one love more and more the surface philosophy of things, to observe how glad such mortals as Calvin and Buckle are to come back, every idle hour, to the great grassy field in which all the world's men and women and children are at work and at play. They stay away from the world just long enough to write a page or two, and back they come for a new breath of fresh air. Having shown how all the thoughts and deeds of each mortal were fixed beyond change far back in eternity-that man is a wheel in a great machine, and is moved by the great Motive Power-Calvin puts aside his paper and pen, and walking forth into the streets of Geneva, praises and scolds like a good father; and when there is a disturbance of the peace he becomes a peace-maker, by means of a literal staff or stick. Meanwhile his march of fate is doing well enough in his book.

With Buckle, affairs are not otherwise. He shows plainly that the actions of a man are not the creation of his will, any more than the foliage of a tree is a voluntary display on the part of the oak or ash. As a tree is clothed with leaves or blossoms by the outside influences, so each individual is clothed with deeds and thoughts by influences before him and around him. But having elaborated well this theory, having shut himself up in his room, and having reviewed all nations from its holy quiet, he hastens out into the fresh air and scolds like a step-mother at Lord Bacon for being so foolish as to stand in the snow, to the peril of a valuable life. Instead of showing us that Lord Bacon was standing in the snow, in obedience to the influence of past generations, in obedience to a great tidal wave of imprudence that, rolling along from antiquity, sweeps away the helpless individual soul, he absolutely talks to the prince of thinkers as men talk to men or child to child, assuming the presence

of a will, without one word about food or climate. Now the fact that the deep philosophers are in such haste always to get back to the common surface, is enough to confirm one in the conclusion that it is better to remain all the while on the common plain of life. It was a wise conclusion of a German general, whose army had invariably fallen back in every battle for thirty years, that he would thereafter follow a league to the rear, that he might always save two leagues of travel when his troops met the foe. Led by such an example of prudent generalship, we would wish to lag far behind Buckle and Calvin, and recruit our health and spirits at the point to which they shall inevitably fall back after a few shots at the enemy.

Not only is the longing to get the feet on the common ground betrayed by these giants away from their set tasks, but even in the midst of their profoundest thoughts there are beautiful glimpses stolen by them of the solid land outside, upon which humanity is living and laughing and plowing and reaping. The Genevan sage looks up from his page on fate and says: "Nevertheless, hereby is not the free-will of man impaired;" and the great Englishman, too, looks up and feels the same "nevertheless," though he betrays it only by a smile. The difference in the two systems is in the word "nevertheless." England is silent; Geneva sings it aloud. Now that word is the effort of Antæus to touch the ground with his feet.

When the marine divers put great weights to their bodies and silently drop down into the deep sea, they are very careful to carry a cord along that may keep them related definitely to the sunshine world, and some man sits in the upper sunshine to hold the line and read the wishes of the hero in the depths. Soon there is a very marked

pull at the rope. The brave, good heart below wishes to rise. Oh, how he longs to be up beside the man in the sunshine! If it be lawful to compare small things to great, what shall forbid us from feeling that the "nevertheless" is the signal of the deep thinkers that they desire to come up for a good fresh breath, and to see whether the sun is still shining and the birds still singing in the upper air? To one reading the first pages of Spinoza, the thought comes that the strange being has gone away from all former things of matter or thought, and that he wishes to beguile the reader away from all old and dear things. The wilderness grows darker and more pathless before us. We become confused, and begin to fear our guide to be something apart from human, when lo! by a secret spring, known only to Spinoza, he ushers us into the presence of our common religion. To this presence we come, not by any visible steps of logic, but by Spinoza's own pull at the rope, by his own peculiar use of the intermediate "nevertheless." He is mortal. He belongs to the filii terræ, and is as anxious as his homesick reader for frequent visits to motherland. In view of this well-known effort of the world's giants to touch at times the earth's green grass, it would seem the plain duty of the multitude to consider the common level of earth's thought and feeling a wonderfully dear spot worthy of a life-long sojourn. The surface of the earth is better than the cold air above or depths beneath. The smile of the sea is not in its deep soundings, but on the open face.

"There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass.

Here are cool mosses deep,

And thro' the moss the ivies creep,

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep."

HE question of the removal of the
Capital to some point in

the Mississippi Valley, has become one of absorbing interest. A convention, having this object in view, met at St. Louis on the twenty-seventh of October, in which were represented not less than sixteen States and Territories. It was presided over by J. D. Caton, Ex-ChiefJustice of Illinois; and the delegates, as a body, were men of confirmed character and ability. The proceedings were characterized by great unanimity. No particular place was designated as the future Capital, but the removal to some point in the Mississippi Valley was insisted on, and a committee was appointed to express the sentiments of the convention, in an address not yet published.

In view of this action, an inquiry into the origin of the legislation by which the present Capital was founded, and the motives which influenced the legislators in the selection of the place, may not be uninteresting to the reader.

The first Congress, under the present Constitution, assembled in 1789, in the old City Hall, in New York. The building stood in Wall street, opposite Broad street, on the site of the present Custom House. It was in a dilapidated condition, and the accommodations were inadequate. The city had no funds to appropriate for repairs, and the Continental treasury was empty. The citizens, however, anxious to retain the seat of government in their midst, started a subscription, and succeeded in raising the sum of thirty-two thousand dollars, which was expended in repairs; and the renovated building, re-named

"Federal Hall," was placed by the city authorities at the disposal of the new Congress. The day appointed for the meeting was ushered in by the firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, and other popular demonstrations; but only eight Senators and thirteen Representatives - not enough to form a quorum appeared, and 8 month elapsed before both Houses could organize for business. This was accomplished March 30th, 1789. It was here that, on the Monday following (April 6th), the electoral votes, in presence of the Senate and House of Representatives-John Langdon presiding,—were counted, when George Washington was declared unanimously elected first President of the United States.

Toward the close of the session, the question of fixing permanently the seat of government was discussed, and with much acrimony of feeling. Nine years before, in consequence of an unfortunate mutiny at Philadelphia, the Continental Congress had removed from that city, and in the meanwhile had been a peripatetic body, meeting at Trenton, Annapolis, and finally settling down in New York. Pennsylvania was desirous of again possessing the Capital; while Maryland, Virginia, and the extreme Southern States, were determined to fix it on the banks of the Potomac. The New England Repre sentatives were non-committal, and advocated a postponement of the question; but the Southern members, including those from Pennsylvania, fearing that the claims of New York would become stronger by delay, insisted on immediate action. Accordingly, a reso